On Monday, January 14th, 2019, I had the opportunity to see a play called The In-Between at the PAS in Varennes. The In-Between, produced by Geordie Theatre, was directed by Mike Payette and written by Marcus Youssef. While reading the following text, you will learn about my personal review of the play by first, reading a short summary, then my opinion about the sound effects and the music choices and finally the themes and subjects.
The In-Between is based on three teenagers with different ethnicities, different mother tongues and different cultures but they have one thing in common: they go to the same high school. One of them is Lily, she was born in Asia and adopted by her, now, white Canadian parents. Her best friend is called Britt, she is a Canadian girl with a ‘bad reputation’ and her mother is an alcoholic. Lily’s crush is named Karim, he is Arabic and his family and him immigrated to Montreal when he was young. Karim and Britt don’t have a good relationship, based on stereotypes, they think the other one has a bad influence on Lily. Britt thinks that Karim is a terrorist because he is Arabic and a Muslim, which is not true, he is Christian. Karim thinks that Brit is stupid and judges her by the way she looks. They are ready to do everything if it keeps the other away from Lily, even if it means for Britt to tell everyone that Karim has a bomb in his school bag. They finally learn about each other, with open minds, they make their own opinions, not based on news or social media, but based on reality.
I was amazingly surprised by the music choices, normally songs in plays like the In-Between are unknown songs or there is not a lot of music and sound effects. However, in this play, a lot of great hit songs of 2018 were intelligently used to create an atmosphere and make the viewer feel like he is part of the play. In those hits, there were ‘Lovely’ by Billie Eilish and Khalid, which also played in the season two of ‘Thirteen Reasons Why’. I also very liked the sound effects, when they were texting or when the police were coming to arrest Karim. I thought it made the story even more real and it captivated our attention.
The play talked about a lot of sensitive themes and subjects like diversity, immigration and stereotypes. Sometimes, they talked about a subject. For example, adoption, when Karim asks Lily about her ‘real’ parents, it would have been interesting to know more about adoption, to know how Lily feels about her biological parents. Same when Karim says he immigrated to Canada when he was little, they could have elaborated more on the subject, so that the viewer can know how it feels to immigrate, be adopted, be different. It would also have been nice to add more real life stories and facts.
Finally, I would give this play a 3.8 on 5 stars because I really liked the music and the sound effects but I wished the subjects were more explained and elaborated.
Alicia Lavoie groupe 44